11/18/2008 @ 6:00AM

Microsoft Targets Indie Game Developers

Platforms like the PlayStation Network, Xbox Live Arcade and WiiWare have cast a spotlight on the independent game-development community, transforming small development teams like Jenova Chen’s ThatGameCompany and one-man shops like Jonathan Mak into micro celebrities. Talent scouts now troll the Independent Games Festival in hopes of finding the next rising star.

But despite all the attention, it remains difficult for independent developers to get noticed, get published and get compensated for their efforts. That’s what
Microsoft
hopes to change with its XNA Community Games, which debuts Wednesday as part of the Xbox 360 relaunch.

Targeted at students and independent developers, XNA Community Games gives designers access to the 14 million Xbox Live members. Developers are free to create any sort of game they want using the XNA Game Studio, Microsoft’s development kit for creating games for the PC, Xbox Live and Zune. Once finished, the titles are submitted to the XNA Creator’s Club community for review, where members rate the games for content before they’re pushed live to the Xbox community.

Developers can price their games between $2 and $10, retaining up to 70% of revenues. Some 25 titles–ranging from the puzzle game “Blow” that asks players to navigate a bubble through a maze with strategically placed fans, to the hack-and-slash fighting game “Colosseum”–will be available Wednesday.

The garage and bedroom programmers who make up the independent game-development community have clung to the Internet as their publishing platform. It’s where developers created games like “Passage,” a haunting portrayal of our limited life spans, and “Crayon Physics,” a physics puzzle that players solve by drawing objects onto the screen. While the Internet offers free, viral distribution, it also makes it difficult to connect with a game-playing audience that is willing to pay for games.

While
Sony
and Microsoft have made strides to accommodate independent developers with the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade, these platforms have a stringent approval process for developers, whereas XNA Community Games doesn’t.

Nintendo
also doesn’t dictate the content that developers can create for its WiiWare platform, but the company does control its games’ release dates–letting only a couple titles trickle onto its platform each week. There is far more content than these platforms can handle. By comparison, XNA Community Games should make it easier for young developers to test and display their skills–and it will expose Xbox owners to a different game-playing world.

From Microsoft’s standpoint, XNA Community Games gives it a chance to expand its portfolio to a host of creative and quirky games that will appeal to a broader and more diverse audience than its blockbusters. Plus, it will give the company a jump on recruiting new talent.